


if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks (i'll follow you into the dark)

by meios



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Feelings Shared Through Poetry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 03:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: when seungcheol is ten, his family moves to the country. what he finds there is made of gold.





	if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks (i'll follow you into the dark)

** I. **

 

when seungcheol is ten, his family moves to the country.

 

they say that it’s for his brother, for his asthma that truly only seems to grow swollen and constricted when faced with the city’s smog. when asked for his opinion, he simply shrugs, says goodbye to his friends without tears and with plenty of hugs (as they cry enough into his shirt, snotty and wet,) and he puts on a brave smile. he says that it’s for the best. and with his small backpack full of compact discs, a walkman, a game boy color, and a book of myths, he climbs into the back of his father’s car.

 

the industry slowly transforms into dusty yellow fields and ocean blue skies. he wonders how exactly the painters accomplished such vibrant colors, silently, as a jeffrey mcdaniel translation goes soft in his ears: “ _when she doesn’t respond, i know she’s used up all her words, so i slowly whisper ‘i love you’ thirty-two and a third times._ ”

 

before seungcheol falls asleep two hours into the many kilometer journey, he hears the sea waves crash.

 

** II. **

 

their new home looks, to seungcheol, like a castle.

 

he wordlessly explores the large home, the rooms more spacious than their old apartment, the ceilings high and a chandelier with more crystals than a cave adorning it hanging in the dining room. his bedroom is neck to his brothers, a little smaller than his but he doesn’t mind.

 

there’s a bookshelf next to the desk which is next to his window; it overlooks the large field and a pond that lay adjacent to their home. books remain from the previous family, and as the young boy peruses them, a cut forms on his finger, a droplet of blood peeking out from the crack.

 

he sucks at the split flesh, words carved into the top of the shelf seeming to turn darker as he does:

 

_oṃ arapacana dhīḥ_

 

seungcheol merely shrugs and begins to unpack, the hum ringing throughout the vintage headphones still hung around his neck buzzing throughout the room.

 

** III. **

 

seungcheol takes to reading books in the field during summers.

 

he doesn’t listen to music much anymore, as the sounds of the birds and the cicadas and the soft rush of bumblebees debating whether or not his hair is, indeed, a flower suit the mood much better. he reads through _alice’s adventures in wonderland_ five times before he decides that he needs more material to breeze through. his father drives him to the nearest town, where he raids the bookstores—mostly secondhand, but he finds that books have more personality then—for anything.

 

he reads about censorship, about kidnappings and murders and history; he reads about talking lions that are simply metaphors for god figures, and he reads about evil wizards and rings of power and hobbits and towers. seungcheol learns about mermaids, about odysseus and the oedipus complex, about heracles and krakens. he grows acquainted with how love conquers evil and that maybe religious texts should only be read with a grain of salt in mind.

 

his favorite book is _the tibetan book of the dead_ by the time he turns fifteen.

 

** IV. **

 

he dances around a small bonfire that he lights near the pond. the fish leap from the water, like a ritual as smoke curls into the moon. and he whispers song lyrics to himself, remembered from his childhood; he looks up with a tiny, lazy smile to barely see mars, and as the brightness of the north star shines down upon him, the young boy swears that a comet is plummeting to earth.

 

he spins about three times as his portable stereo plays a crooning ballad of cabbages and kings.

 

and when the explosion sounds soundlessly in the distance, all sparks and flames and skeleton parades, seungcheol wonders aloud if the comet was really a comet.

 

he walks in the star’s direction.

 

** V. **

 

the crater is fairly large, all burned yellow grass and dark gray smoke billowing up from phoenix ashes, and the cinders are still hot as seungcheol slides down the indentation, making his way towards the center. he covers his lower face with his sleeve, breathing through the cloth, and the slowly melting rock in the epicenter of the quivering comet begins to crack.

 

he closes his eyes when light brighter than the sun envelops the crater, and then—

 

seungcheol opens them to find an unconscious boy right where the comet had been.

 

he’s naked, lithe, with a muss of white blond hair that reaches down passed his shoulders. his back is to seungcheol, spine ever so slightly curled as he lies on his side, and the young boy breathes out relief upon seeing the faint movement of inhales, exhales, inhales.

 

seungcheol kneels down beside the naked boy, fingertips cautious as they touch his skin, which is fire hot to the touch. but he is not burned, only somewhat uncomfortable, and there is a faint glow where his skin meets the boy’s.

 

the naked boy groans weakly, rolls over a bit, and seungcheol finds that he has the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. they are the same shade of blue as the skies here, and he smiles a bit nervously, warmly, wordlessly saying, _i’m a friend. i won’t hurt you._

 

the boy only smiles, exhaustion lining his flawless visage, and he whispers, “what is your name, curious?”

 

“seungcheol.”

 

“seungcheol… it suits you. brighter than the stars that led you here,” he says, voice raspy and enchanting. his eyes hood a little, pupils dilated but focused, calm. he looks like what the young boy imagines the many protagonists in his ever-treasured books must look like. and he is drawn in, thumb grazing over a jagged, broken scar that lay mere inches below his armpit, right where one rib is, as though something had been ripped from the boy’s side.

 

“what’s your name, spaceboy?” he mumbles, studying his flesh: the softness of it, the perfection of it, save, of course, for the two scars on either side of his torso. they pockmark his ribs, the milky off-color of them. the boy shivers somewhat.

 

“i do not have one.”

 

seungcheol tilts his head some, meeting the boy’s eyes.

 

“well, i cannot remember ever having one,” the boy continues, sitting up some. seungcheol leans back a bit, landing on his buttocks as the boy smiles at him. he can’t be much younger than him, perhaps around the same age, but the boy’s smile speaks of wisdom that he cannot even begin to fathom.

 

he’s beautiful and entrancing and like a book, he is asking to be read for not even the boy, it appears, knows the ending.

 

“may i ask if you can help me come up with one, curious seungcheol?” asks the spaceboy, and seungcheol nods, smiles gently, and it only increases in size when it is returned. “thank you.”

 

** VI. **

 

seungcheol lies to his parents for the first time, says that the spaceboy is a friend he’d met in town. his mother had disowned him, thrown him out, and he had nowhere to go, and oh, please, can he stay here until he sorts himself out?

 

his parents give the spaceboy a pitying look, nod and ask him why he’s only covered in a blanket, to which seungcheol quickly explains that his mother had refused to let him pack. “she’s awful,” he says quietly, and the sympathy—venomous, sickening, acidic—only grows. they usher the spaceboy up to seungcheol’s room.

 

the young boy lays out a pair of boxer shorts, some jeans that he no longer fits into, an oversized hoodie, and some slippers. the spaceboy puts them on, sits on the edge of his bed, looks up at him.

 

“what is it?” he asks after a long silence, index finger snagging on one of the older texts on his bookshelf. he sucks at the newly shed blood that peeks through his skin.

 

“your mother and father are nice people.”

 

seungcheol only hums in response, bends down on flat feet, pulling out _the tibetan book of the dead_ before straightening and walking toward his mattress. he lay down with his back propped up on his pillow and headboard, eyes flickering toward the spaceboy’s.

 

“you do not speak much, do you, seungcheol?” the spaceboy softly inquires, to which the other shakes his head. “may i ask why not?”

 

he shrugs. “there’s nothing to say. i let them talk for me.”

 

“who?”

 

“the books.”

 

** VII. **

 

they take to lying out in the field with books and fishing poles, butterfly nets and portable stereos, wiling the hours away as cicadas and tiny, vibrantly colored birds speak for them. they murmur the prose and the stanzas, gaze at the illustrations like grade school children, and they pull out grass in clumps as they smile gently at each other: a game they’ve both learned to play.

 

they weave knots with dusty yellow grass and feed them to the fish.

 

and when the sun’s glimmer begins to die, the spaceboy’s flesh takes on a pale yellow tone, much akin to the tail of the comet he had replaced so many nights beforehand. he lies on his back and stars at the sunset upside down, lips pursed and ocean blue eyes hooded.

 

the sky is purple and cloudless.

 

“seungcheol,” he starts softly and the other boy lies down beside him, shirt riding up a bit; the grass tickles his stomach. he listens. “what is my name?”

 

the boy ponders for a moment, studying him, reaching out to ghost his fingertips over exposed flesh. “jeonghan,” he replies, smiling, leaning down to rest his chin on his chest. in one of his books, there had been a man named jeonghan, a detective, an artist, who had fallen in love with the future victim of a serial killer. the jeonghan in the book, to seungcheol, had been a hero, a mystery. “you look like a jeonghan.”

 

the spaceboy breathes out a chuckle, looking down at him, whispers, “then that shall be my name.”

 

like a phoenix rising from its ashes, the spaceboy glows.

 

** VIII. **

 

 _“my third grade teacher told me i had no future. i run through snow and turn around just to make sure i’ve got a past. my life’s a chandelier dropped from an airplane. i graduated first in my class from alibi school. there ought to be a healthy family cage at the zoo, or an open field, where i can lose my mother as many times as i need._ ” he’s mumbling in the dead of night when the only light is not from the moon but from the gas lanterns that they carry out of the house each evening.

“ _when i get bored, i call the cops, tell them there’s a pervert peeking in my window! then i slip on a flimsy nightgown, go outside, press my face against the glass and wait… this makes me proud to be an american, where drunk drivers ought to wear necklaces made from the spines of the children they’ve run over_.”

 

jeonghan rests his head on seungcheol’s stomach and listens, hands folded on his chest as though he’s praying. the stars shoot across the sky and the poem boy pauses in his recitation to count jeonghan’s breaths.

 

“go on,” the other boy whispers, gaze turning a bit to meet his, eyes shimmering as sapphires, as the sea.

 

“ _i remember my face being invented through a windshield. all the wounds stitched with horsehair so the scars galloped across my forehead. i remember the hymns the cherubs sang in my bloodstream, the way even my shadow ached when the chubby infant stopped_.” he sits up some, propped on his elbows, and there’s a tender sense of understanding that wells up in his belly, suddenly there and intoxicating, and jeonghan removes his mess of blond from his torso to look at him, inquisitive.

 

it’s always been there: a magnetism, something that had never really _been_ before. he breathes and it’s almost as if jeonghan catches it, inhales and throws it back.

 

they do not blink.

 

he urges, “go on.”

 

“ _i remember wishing i could be boiled like water and made pure again. desire so real it could be outlined in chalk_ ,” he whispers. “ _my eyes were the color of palm trees in a hurricane. i’d wake up and my id would start the day without me. somewhere a junkie fixes the hole in his arm and a racing car zips around my halo. a good god is hard to find_.”

 

“do you believe in god?” asks jeonghan, voice soft as the buzz of the fireflies.

 

seungcheol shrugs, tilts his head up. “i believe in the stars.”

 

the spaceboy says nothing, only moves closer to recline beside him. his profile is flawless as it always has been, the lifeblood within him glowing molten, his ribs poking out from his midriff as his shirt is pushed up; his scars look like angel wings.

 

the young boy leans over and kisses his cheek.

 

initially, he supposes, it doesn’t mean anything. it’s only, truthfully, something that barely registers in his mind, but jeonghan’s skin is liquid fire, a chemical reaction that smells like the earth, like the field, and the magnetism grows stronger, more forceful.

 

seungcheol is no longer in control; he never has been.

 

“ _each morning, i look in the mirror and say_ —” he breathes as jeonghan turns his head to press his lips to seungcheol’s, rough and heat and oh, he thinks, this is what it feels like to be kissed. “ _and say, ‘promise me something: don’t do the things i’ve done._ ”

 

“i will not,” promises the spaceboy, instincts visibly running through his veins. seungcheol’s spindly fingers, pockmarked with past cuts from the old books’ spines, wrap themselves around his sharp hips and pull him closer. he gasps a bit, hands framing the young boy’s face and kissing him.

 

desperation tastes sweeter when the fireflies are out.

 

** IX. **

the summer storms drown their field.

 

lightning streaks across the sky when the power goes out, and seungcheol’s brother plays the bösendorfer grand piano, the thunder his metronome. he’s been breathing better over the years, his hospital trips now nonexistent and the long plait of black hair he’s been growing since he was small nearly touches the hardwood floor. he pauses, pushes his glasses up, and smiles when mother and father applaud.

 

“seungcheol, where’s your friend?” he asks after a moment.

 

the young boy stands when he finds that there is only a cold spot on the couch beside him, where, moments before, there had been a warm body, a soft head resting on his shoulder, lazily attentive. now there is nothing: only a jeonghan-shaped indentation in the cushions.

 

a rack of thunder shakes the house and seungcheol rushes out into the storm with bare feet and the vague knowledge of where the spaceboy might be.

 

** X. **

 

the storm ceases the moment seungcheol makes it to the edge of the crater, where the earth caves in upon itself and he can see down into hell if he tries. the crater has filled with water, sparkling as the moon peeks out from the dissipating clouds, and he sees jeonghan floating like a dead man in the center, naked back all the is visible save for the shock of blond on his head.

 

seungcheol jumps into the water and pulls him back to the earth.

 

he’s breathing, but barely, and seizing when his body meets the dust of grass, and his ribs are mutating, moving underneath his melting golden skin as though they, themselves, are alive. and seungcheol says nothing, only presses his lips to the spaceboy’s, and his heart leaps in his chest when he feels jeonghan respond, kiss back

 

“ _when you were sleeping on the sofa,_ ” recites the spaceboy in a rasp, when they pull back and jeonghan arches, squirms, cries out in pain. he sits up as his back curves, tears stinging his eyes, lines of salt trailing down his cheeks. “ _i put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. that—that is the ocean i want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton, and pirate ships._ ”

 

seungcheol watches on as jeonghan cups his cheek in apology, and his scars are growing, his skin a darker gold. his sides bulge as if parasites are dislodging themselves from his being. and jeonghan screams as fingers, hands, arms squeeze out of his flesh with difficulty, like the spaceboy is suppressing them without much luck.

 

“ _i-i walk up to people on the street that kind—kind of look like you and ask them the questions i would ask you: c-can we sit on a rooftop a-and watch the stars dissolve into smoke—smoke rising from a chimney?_ ”

 

“yes, jeonghan, whatever you want—” seungcheol begins, but his words die when jeonghan jumps up, body an acute angle, and lets loose a wounded scream. a clasp of silk—white, cream, rainbows—blows from the horizon and wraps itself around his naked waist as the new pair of arms collapses to his sides. a crown lowers itself from the heavens and rests upon his head; it’s adorned with magnificent jewels that seungcheol has never seen before.

 

he crawls forward when jeonghan falls back to the ground, the field pooling around him like waterfowl.

 

“you—you summoned me, curious seungcheol,” he murmurs, tears continuing to stream down his golden cheek, and the boy wipes them away for the multi-armed spaceboy before he can even blink. “with my mantra and your innocent spill of blood as an offering, your pure soul, your heart. i gave you your voice, your books, your escape.”

 

“i didn’t ask—”

 

“but you desired,” explains jeonghan—not-jeonghan.

 

“i wanted to find something.”

 

“and you did: me.”

 

“but i—” _love you_.

 

the spaceboy knows, oh, he knows. he understands, nods and smiles sadly, kisses him with as much fervor as he can muster before he begins to fade with the rising sun. and seungcheol doesn’t want to let go, can’t, begs him to stay without words because he’s never really ever needs to speak to convey his thoughts to jeonghan. they’ve always just been.

 

existence. together.

 

the spaceboy shakes his head, whispers, “ _the hermit escapes the human world and likes to sleep on mountains among the green widely spaced vines where clear torrents sing harmonies. he steams with joy, swinging at ease through freedom_ ,” he’s fading more, sinking into the sunbeams like a melting ice cube, “ _not stained with worldly affairs, heart clean as a white lotus_.”

 

he’s gone, still clutching seungcheol’s hand.

 

the warmth is stuck to his skin and the young boy cries.

 

** XI. **

 

when seungcheol is twenty, he writes a book about a god, a deity with four arms and one face, with skin made of gold and a shock of blond hair that reaches down passed his shoulders, a dazzling smile. he wears a crown of jewels and rainbow silks around his waist and he calls to those that need him most even when they, themselves, do not know it.

 

he lives in his parents’ old home by the field and by the pond, his brother having left many years ago; his parents lay in graves in the backyard, a drunk driver having taken their lives three years prior.

 

he does not call himself a hermit. he is only waiting, he explains to the old woman that lives in town.

 

for what? she asks.

 

for the spaceboy, he replies. i see him in every meteor shower and every star and every summer storm.

 

the old woman smiles and seungcheol closes his favorite book once more.

**Author's Note:**

> the poems quoted are, in order:
> 
> the quiet world by jeffrey mcdaniel  
> disasterology by jeffrey mcdaniel  
> the secret by jeffrey mcdaniel  
> seven poems by han shan
> 
> the mantra quoted is the invocation of the bodhisattva, manjushri or munsubosal in korean. he is associated with insight. he's one of the oldest bodhisattva in existence.
> 
> i wrote this back in high school. i've edited very little. i hope you like it.


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